


All a Wheel

by SeaPinecone



Category: DreamSMP, Minecraft (Video Game), talesfromthesmp - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Hurt No Comfort, Monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:28:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29111589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeaPinecone/pseuds/SeaPinecone
Summary: Karl talks about his struggles with time travel (angsty lmao)
Relationships: None
Kudos: 17





	All a Wheel

**Author's Note:**

> // mentions of death, multiple realities, losing friendship, gagging mention

I thought I would grow numb to it. I thought my memory would turn to dust. That if I broke time enough, I would break my mind, too. Break it in half, let the memories drain. The memories that would haunt me otherwise. I wanted to purge the memories ingrained into my head from my body. Retch up the horror and anguish that hunts me in every dimension.

You don’t understand why I torture myself. You don’t understand. These, alternate realities, futures, history, they need to be written, because otherwise, why do I have this power?

It a wheel. That goes around and around, constantly chasing itself. Time, my situation, my mind. All as intertwined as the shaky hands of a mother praying to her god. I cannot escape time travelling, because it is the antidote to its own poison. It leaves me memories that make me shake as I record them into dusty notebooks, and is the only thing that eases the pain of those memories.

A cycle. I’ve meddled with time, and it’s not a line, it’s a wheel. I can summarise Earth’s history in a sentence or two. War, surrender, allyship, friendship, betrayal, war.

It’s predictable. You would think that makes it hurt less, knowing what is going to happen, or at least what the next step in the cycle will be. But my heart does not numb. My mind forgets, my heart does not. My hearts aches, and it is wrenched, and it cries, and it bleeds sorrow and dread with every agonising heartbeat. 

I know what will happen to my closest friends, how they will die, how their parents died, and how their children will die, and I will hurt and cry every time they choke out their final breath. I will bite my lips until they are raw, and curl my fingers into fists so tightly they turn a sickening ivory. I will taste the salt on my tongue as tears find their way into my mouth. I will, and I have, and I am. And it will happen again.

I can’t numb myself to feelings. I can shatter the linearity of time, but I cannot simply stop myself from feeling pointless emotions. My heart is vulnerable to every thorn. And my heart gushes at every scratch. 

I’ve tried to forget some other way, or to dampen the sadness as I look into the smiling eyes of someone I know I have seen weep, in another reality. But alcohol just intensifies every memory by tenfold, until I wake up sober, soaked in tears and gasping for air. I avoid alcohol.

I used to visit my friends’ graves every year, laying fresh flowers and polishing their cracking gravestones. And then I would return, to laugh with them, to participate in their nonsensical cycle of war and peace. That was before my memory started to fade. I hardly ever remember to lay out flowers, now. Occasionally I will remember, guilt thick in my stomach as I see their granite crumbling and the flowers as dead as them. One time, I even visited to find their graves gone. Forgotten entirely. Replaced. I remember digging them small graves, twigs embedded into the ground to mark it. I dug those graves for hours, until my fingers were bloodied and muddy, fingernails chipped and dirt trapped underneath. I stopped after it became dark, settling for tiny graves. 

I don’t remember much other than that. I do know what I like. I like Bad’s smile after he’s done something mischievous, but I don’t even remember his face. I know Sapnap gives warm hugs, but I do not remember how I know that. I like Quackity, but I don’t know why. I like Dream’s presents he brings me, but I can’t name a single gift he has given. I know there are more, I don’t even remember.I love them, and I don’t even know why. And that makes me cry, because I want to know why my tears are endless when I sit at their graves, why my body shakes harder for them, racked with sobs, then it does for anyone else. I know I love them deeply, and I know the reason I cry so hard is because I know there had to have been warmth and smiles and laughter for me to mourn so deeply.Sunshine that felt like it would never leave, and would keep me warm forever, that has since been extinguished.

If I only could grow accustomed to pain, maybe this life would not be torture. But I can’t. 

Nor can I numb myself.

I want to be comforted by friends who love me, but no matter how many realms I travel, I can never find the memories that I miss when I stand over their graves. I write it down when I remember, and reread the happy memories when life becomes suffering. But the people in the scriptures that are _so_ human, so _tangibl_ e, are just comprised of ink, as far as I can remember. 

They are just ink.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave kudos, wonderful humans! Also, this was typed up on a shitty keyboard that barely registers half the letters and has autocorrect... so uh
> 
> Comments too! pls :)


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